Love Lust and Longing | Emotions Beyond Happiness

Love is tricky, especially in long-term relationships. It asks for so much and often, for such opposite things. And it is so fickle, changing its essence and degree constantly; romance, eroticism, sex, affection, companionship, security, validation. Some facet is always being pushed back while another takes the front seat. At times all of them come to play creating those famed moments of feeling complete-mind, body and soul and at times the two people in love just seem to pull along on what has been created in those moments of completion. We are always either longing for love or basking in it. Sometimes love needs intense action, at others the knowledge that one is loved in enough to just chug along.

Longing For Love Or Relationship

And then, love also houses within its folds, the very opposite of what love is generally associated with. Hatred and ill feeling, so much so that one can die or kill for it. Crimes of passion have been recorded in every era and culture. Love and longing go hand in hand and so love carries the burden of its need to possess the beloved. Which almost always trespasses on the others’ rights and liberties. And yet, when in its fold, the lovers willingly submit to the other; the drama begins when the essence changes; as it inevitably will. Besides conflict is always a part of intimacy, isn’t it?

And yet life seems pointless without love and longing, without having people we can love and care for. The longing for love is hardwired in our DNA, however much we may claim to be independent and self-contained. We all need witnesses to our lives to feel that we matter, to some out there, otherwise we would just be a number in this huge mass of 6 billion plus.

Emotions Beyond Happiness

We are herd creatures, perhaps that is the only way we could have survived back then and thus we are helpless in the face of this millions of years of coded instincts in our genes. They say the biggest ailment that assails the developed world is loneliness. Humans are designed to be filled with longing for love, to be longing for a relationship.  I long for love just as much as you do.

And yet, love, lust and longing are but a bundle of paradoxes! And so are we….

For longing for love with continuous erotic passion but needing a deep comforting affection

For wanting to belong to one, to be filled with longing love for them, but irremediably tempted by others

For demanding space one moment and aching to merge the next

For demanding the right to explore but anxious to be home as soon as the terror of the distance dawns

For the impulse to tell all and know all but become bored as soon as we do

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For aching with loneliness and longing for a relationship but seething due to differences

For longing for your love yet trying to find ways to repress and get away

For being terribly in love, but also scared enough to say goodbye to who you love

For demanding space…but not wanting to give it

For asking for freedom even as we are longing for someone, but not willing to reciprocate

For sometimes hating the person we love and not having the courage to acknowledge it

For exploiting the vulnerabilities of our loved ones, just because we know we can

For hurting the person we love even as we know we should forgo and forget

For knowing that, even as  I long for love, loving more means less power, and more power means I love less; not accepting one and not understanding the other

For demanding unconditional acceptance but holding the loved one accountable for every little folly

For knowing that we are longing for someone who allures us but also repels us at times

To abhor being possessed but always trying to own

For the need to be one and yet the impulse to be more in that one (power plays)

For reveling in the feeling of love and seeing the beauty of commitment and the tediousness of it too

For letting love, lust and longing take over our sanity

For always, always longing for love

Let’s talk love and longing

And so here on this site, we invite everyone to speak of their experiences of loving and longing, longing love, and lovingly longing – their conflicts and their beauties. Of the sense of infinity t it offers and also its fleetingness. Of the inevitability of pain and pleasure that being in love entails, its juggle…endless juggle.

We will keep bringing you researched facts and expert opinions, articles and dissertations. We will create surveys and polls that will make you think from your bones…

Most importantly, Bonobology will nudge you to think, rethink, debate and listen to other voices, and help find your own.

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